The Montpelier Manifesto (Sept. 4, 2012)

This manifesto sounds mostly Tea Party-like. It has only one obviously anti-free market provision:

Public and private sector labor unions which have been under open attack by the government since the Reagan administration, by hostile anti-union private employers such as Wal-Mart, and more recently by some Republican governors.

All the rest is straight Tea Party.

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We, citizens of this American land, haunted by the nihilism of separation, meaninglessness, and powerlessness, subsumed by political elites who use corporate, state, and military power to manipulate our lives, pawns of a global system of dominance and deceit in which transnational megacompanies and big government control us through money, markets, and media, sapping our political will, civil liberties, collective memory, traditional cultures, sustainability, and independence, and as victims of affluenza, technomania, cybermania, globalism, and imperialism, do issue and proclaim this:

2. One that is too big and corrupt to be fixed or reformed, certainly not by such fantasies as campaign finance reform or corporate-personhood amendments.

3. One that has lost its moral authority, is corrupt to the core, and is owned, operated and controlled by Wall Street, Corporate America, and their political lackeys.

4. One run by a single brain-dead national political party on life-support systems, sustained by national and Congressional elections that are sold to the highest bidder, disguised as a genuine two-party system.

5. One that relies on and fosters the illusion that only the U.S. government can solve all or our problems all of the time, in the face of the fact that it is the U.S. government that is the problem.

Economy

1. A collapsing economy, with a moribund housing market and a staggering number of mortgage foreclosures, and high unemployment because of jobs lost to China, India, and elsewhere over the past three decades of globalism.

2. Stagnant real incomes for all but the super-rich, resulting in an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor and an increasing rate of poverty, homelessness, and inadequate insurance.

3. A $15-plus trillion national debt and unfunded mandate obligations of $43 trillion, a staggering burden only added to by stimulus spending, tax cuts, and “quantitative easing” (printing money), none of which is restoring economic growth but does make us increasingly and dangerously dependent on China, Japan, and other foreign countries buying our treasury bonds.

4. A central bank which has, by monetizing the growing national debt and providing cheap credit to bail out banks, increased the money supply to the point where the future value of the dollar and the rate of inflation are highly uncertain.

5. A financial system based on “tricks and traps” rather than customer service and a financial regulatory system which favors predatory and ruthless Wall Street mega-banks at the expense of ordinary citizens.

6. An economic system absolutely dependent for survival on consumption and affluenza (the illusion that the accumulation of more stuff, provided by big-box stores fostered by government globalization policies, can provide meaning to life), despite the knowledge that unrestrained growth in a world of finite resources is unsustainable and unworthy of pursuit.

7. Public and private sector labor unions which have been under open attack by the government since the Reagan administration, by hostile anti-union private employers such as Wal-Mart, and more recently by some Republican governors.

8. Corporate-owned, government-subsidized agriculture with its use of toxic pesticides and fertilizers, anti-biotics, genetically-engineered seeds, systematic animal cruelty, and virtual absence of food safety regulations creating a menace to public health, the environment, and small farmers.

Foreign Policy

1. An immoral, often clandestine and illegal, imperial system based on full-spectrum dominance, military overstretch, might-makes-right, and the proposition that the world wants to be just like us, leading us to provide support to dictators and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere in the world.

2. A dependence on military might, based on a multi-trillion dollar budget, 1.6 million American troops stationed at over 1,000 bases in 153 countries (including 80,000 in Europe, 36,000 in Japan, and 30,000 in Korea), Special Operations strike forces (Seals, Delta Forces, Rangers, Green Berets) deployed in 120 countries, and a proliferation of pilotless drone aircraft worldwide for reconnaissance and stealth attacks, sometimes killing civilians, including Americans.

3. Immoral, illegal, undeclared wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and (via Israel) Palestine, the threat of war with Iran based on our deliberate acts of provocation, and the endless “war” on terror largely aimed with racial overtones at Muslims.

4. The hammerlock hold of the Israeli Lobby over American foreign policy that forces us to support an Israeli-inspired war on terror against Muslims and keeps us from any real commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

5. The Cuban embargo.

Civil Liberties

1. The highly intrusive, inept, ever-growing, money-guzzling Department of Homeland Security, together with other intelligence agencies, using the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, the Detainee Security Provision of the National Defense Administration Act of 2011, and other covers for citizen surveillance and suppression of civil liberties.

2. The disgraceful (and expensive and useless) Guantanamo Prison, prisoner abuse and torture, and the illegal rendition of terrorist suspects.

3. A president who can order the assassination of anyone, anywhere, anytime (including U.S. citizens) whose name happens to appear on the White House “kill list.”

Criminal Justice

1. Six million people under “correctional supervision” (more than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin), including more black men than were in slavery in 1860 and 50,000 men in solitary confinement in “supermax” prisons.

2. A failed international war on drugs that costs billions, ruins more lives than it saves, has spawned corruption and violence, an entrenched bureaucracy, and which has had no impact on drug use in the United States.

Social Services

1. The most expensive health care system in the world, driven by fear of death on the demand side and greed on the supply side, that ranks 37th in the world according to the World Health Organization, now tied to Obamacare, which remains fatally attached to a private health care system that is in a death-spiral of rising costs and declining health outcomes.

2. An education system dominated by the Federal government, committed to a one-size-fits-all corporate model, to the dumbing-down of America, and to a race to the bottom, which is why it ranks 18th in the industrial world, according to the OECD.

3. A higher education system that is becoming so expensive that only the rich will be able to attend college; all others look forward to debt slavery.

4. A social-welfare net that, despite being enormously expensive, is woefully inadequate to those it serves and has proven incapable of serious reform.

Infrastructure

1. A widespread aging and collapsing infrastructure, including highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, dams, levees, and public water systems, now costing America $129 billion a year, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, and will take an expenditure of $206 billion a year for the next 20 years to fix, sums which are simply unavailable.

2. Transportation crises, including the obsolete and inadequate air-traffic-control systems and railroad passenger train systems, and a Federal highway system now 60 years old falling into disrepair across the country.

Redress of Grievances

“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive… it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government… as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness,” says the Declaration of Independence. Alteration and abolishment include the right to disband, or subdivide, or withdraw, or create a new government.

Let us therefore consider ways peaceably to withdraw from the American Empire by (1) regaining control of our lives from big government, big business, big cities, big schools, and big computer networks; (2) relearning how to take care of ourselves by decentralizing, downsizing, localizing, demilitarizing, simplifying, and humanizing our lives; and (3) providing democratic and human-scale self-government at those local and regional levels most likely to effect our safety and happiness.

Citizens, lend your name to this manifesto and join in the honorable task of rejecting the immoral, corrupt, decaying, dying, failing American Empire and seeking its rapid and peaceful dissolution before it takes us all down with it.

To be presented at the Third Statewide Convention on Vermont Self-Determination on September 14, 2012 to be held in the Vermont State House in Montpelier.

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Labor unions served a purpose in the age of robber barons, exploitation of children in the mills and mines, etc., but today they are just a protection racket designed to stifle competition and keep new blood out of the rank-and-file membership rolls.

And public employee unions should be forbidden because they strike against the public interest and withhold essential services to get the inflated salaries, perks and pensions that have made government work so cushy in comparison to the private sector. Also, when public unions enter into collective bargaining, there is never anyone on either side to protect and represent the tax payers who will ultimately be footing the bill.

At least with private unions, there is management on one side that still has to weigh whether concessions to the unionists are going to drive the price of goods and/or services so high that the public won't pay for them anymore and put the company out of business.

Israel is a democracy established in the ancient Jewish homeland and its not going anywhere. When the arabs accept that there will be peace, until then superior firepower and a culturally bias in favor of democracy, freedom and education will insure Israel remains. Shame on Gary for saying its a tea party platform except the union stuff when the anti Israel stuff is pretty clear.

As an early and continuing supporter of the uniquely great response to the excesses of the current federal administration, I view this so called manifesto as garbage such as frequently conceived by self poclaimed Intellectuals grasping upon the patriotic enthusiasm of angry citizens who are motivated by the radical departure from the fundemental principles so wisely interwoven within our constitution, and who equally distort those principles with contrived nonsense! I believe those principles referenced are the assets we need, not the foolishness of any Manifesto!

The Tea Party manifesto is shorter and easier to read but it shares a lot of common ground. It is too bad that people don't think carefully and honestly about what is happening lately. If you can find an honest and ethical leader that you can genuinely support then do it. Otherwise, think carefully and do the right thing to prepare for the future because it is not going to be pretty.

Well, some of this sounds Tea Partyish, but there's a lot of class envy "hate the rich" type stuff in there, too. Complaining about the "income gap" is also not the Tea Party. And the whining about "affluenza, technomania, cybermania, globalism, and imperialism", not to mention the anti-Israel crap and union boosterism, that's not Tea Party, that's straight-up OWS.

Also, no link to the original source. I think Dr. North is funnin' with us a little bit.

-This government has gradually discarded any legal standing according to the Constitution, instead robbing the citizens to pay for vote buying schemes, resulting in 70% of federal expenditures, and vast tomes of regulation by unelected bureaurcrats who have absolutely no legal standing.

-While the Constitution defers almost no domestic authority to the federal government (the Commerce Clause was intended to regulate only tariffs between states), it does allow authority over foreign relations. It is, however, the proper duty of the citizens to elect to Congress representatives who will fund only those adventures that are in the general interest.

I disagree that the part about the unions is the only "Non-Tea Party" parts of this document. There are other parts that concern me as well.

Governance 1. The phrase "too undemocratic", to me raises red flags. The problem is that the Framers realized that there was a problem with too much democracy, which is why the created a Republic. In my opinion one of the greatest harms to the Constitution that was done was the 17th Amendment that increased Democracy, and removed part of the Republican System and reduced the powers of the States at the national level.

Economy 1. The phrase "because of jobs lost to China, India, and elsewhere over the past three decades of globalism", this is not the cause of the problems listed. Instead it is used to support protectionism which is in it purest form is statism. Instead what caused the housing problem and high unemployment is government policy. Also keep in mind that along with government policy regarding wages and regulation that increase the cost of business, it is the very protectionism that is promoted here that makes the outsourcing problem worst.

Economy 2. "Stagnant real incomes for all but the super-rich, resulting in an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor and an increasing rate of poverty, homelessness, and inadequate insurance." This is pure collectivism and class warfare in disguise. The gap between the rich and the poor is not problem, no matter how wide it gets. Instead the problem is the ability for a person, though hard work to move from one income class to another. We as people should be less concerned about how much our neighbor has and more about what restriction the government places on us to keep us from pursuing that which makes us happy. Also keep in mind that wealth <> happiness, there are plenty of people who are not well off, but are doing that makes them happy.

Economy 5 & 8. Both of these seem to me to be calls for BIGGER government, not less government. This does not mean that government does not have a role, because it does. In these case the role of government is to protect us from those that by their action or fraud would harm our life or take our property. The problem is that bigger government is not the solution, because bigger government results in more complex laws and regulations, which by their very nature have even more loop holes in them. Would any bank or lender, be able to defraud a person, if that person could make their case truly to a jury of their peers. Or a farm use pesticides or fertilizers that they know are harmful, of course not. The problem is that today too many laws and regulation exist, and a company and their executives are considered innocent if they follow the laws and regulations. Following the letter of the law, should never be a defense in these types of cases.

Economy 6. This is not of a problem of government instead it is a problem of society. Government is never a solution for societal problems.

Foreign Policy 4. The writers of this need to review some history and look at the actual facts, instead of relying on propaganda. For example there are more Muslims living in Israeli, with the same rights as their Jewish neighbors then there are Jews living in any of the Muslim countries. And if memory serves right the number of Muslims living in Israeli, actually exceeds the number of Jews living in the Muslim countries.

Social Services 1. Based on phrase "which remains fatally attached to a private health care system that is in a death-spiral of rising costs and declining health outcomes " to me it seems that the writers want a single payer government system, instead of returning to a free-market based system. A truly private and free-market healthcare system is the only solution to our problems in this area.

Infrastructure 1&2. In these section I do not see anywhere talk about the free market resolving these problems, instead I am just hearing complaints about what the government is doing. Specifically I point to the "railroad passenger train system", any person that has done the least amount of research on that, will realize that it will never work here in this country. So why should we be calling for more government spending on this or any of the items listed here. Instead they should be turned over to the private sector to work out and solve.

so , since you dislike the skeleton and the spirit of the document, I would have to assume you DO NOT LIKE IT

I disagreed with all your statements.You were careful in reading the sections in an effort to format a disagreement with them BUT Remember, if you read the end of the document, it is my understanding this is a Document of Secession created in Vermont. This is an small state with little inmigration and probably an small jewish diaspora so it would be appropiate for them.